The Tale of San Taclos
by Eeiralos
Summary: The Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler visit a town called Tamble and encounter a young genius named San Taclos. San's genius has put his village in jeopardy and has drawn the attention of a dangerous foe known as the Slepnirs.


In a small alley in a little town called Tamble, on the planet Aislie in a binary system called Polestar, something wondrous was about to happen; something far more wondrous than a binary star system supporting life – although that's fairly wondrous all by itself. A strange blue box was nudged into being with a wheeze and a screech, like an ailing creature – a sound that should be wholly unpleasant, but held a whispered promise. The wheeze and the rattle huffed and struggled, as if the universe itself were short of breath. And on the exhalation, that most curious blue box became solid and real.

The box had a door – of course it did. Boxes should always have doors, as any proper Aisliean knows. A woman emerged from the box, one with hair as golden as the north fields in autumn.

"Doctor!" called Rose – for that was her name, "The smoke's nothing to fuss over. I was just trying to make tea. Oh...what's all over the ground?"

Rose, it seemed, had never seen snow – at least not the snow that fell on Tamble, which was black and reflective, like ground hematite.

"It's snow!" said the Doctor, as he swept outside the door of the blue box and stuck one arm in the sleeve of his leather jacket.

"It's black," said Rose. This was strange to her, because she was from a place called Earth where the snow is white. How curious.

"Did you really think snow would always be the same all throughout time and space? That'd be a bit dull, wouldn't it? Do you know? We're actually back in time as well. We're, oh..." the Doctor looked at his wrist, although there was nothing on it, "...1725 years into your past, and about three hundred light years to the left. Right! Onwards to Tamble!"

So the Doctor and Rose followed a familiar foot path through the black snow. The air was crisp and fresh, with notes of cherrywood from the village's fireplaces. Down they went, past the pair of hand trees, over the diamond brook, down into the valley that nestled the village between two round bumps of hills.

As they got closer to the village, there were lots of bright, smiling faces and cheerful hellos. The people of Tamble adored visitors. They loved to hear stories of other places, trade new bits of goods, or just meet people who had come from somewhere else. The Doctor with his broad shoulders and hairless face, and Rose with her golden hair and lifted shoes were the most exciting strangers they had seen in many months.

By contrast, the people of Aislie were ornate. Nearly all the women wore a braid of one description or another, some piled elaborately high upon their heads. The men were likewise meticulously groomed. Nearly all sported beards that were trimmed into neat order, the spikes on their chins hidden or highlighted as the men chose.

A sweet aroma, like honey and roasted nuts hung in the cold, crisp air. Rose inhaled a lungful and gave the Doctor's sleeve a tug. As they walked, he told her the story of the Star Cakes (with which we are all familiar), much to her delight and that of a few small children who had been drawn in by his storyteller's voice.

But all was not well in the village. Things had changed since the Doctor had last come to call. Though the town looked well at first glance, Rose began to look more closely. The round huts of the village were brightly painted, the paint barely hid the poor state of repair of most of them. The brightness hid an aching poverty that had crept into the bones of the town. The elaborate braids of the townspeople drew attention away from the shabbiness of their clothes.

"This is not right," said the Doctor. "This is supposed to be a prosperous village - a beautiful, vibrant town. I came here first when I was two hundred and eleven. Or maybe it was four hundred and thirteen."

Rose dropped to her knees in front of a young girl and wound her own pink scarf about the girl's neck. She smiled brightly, then reached into her pocket to pull out a shiny pebble. She pressed it into Rose's hand.  
>"Oh, sweetheart, it's lovely, but I c-" Rose began.<p>

"-take it. You'll insult her. It's the Festival of Giving, and you've just given her a gift. She has to give you one in return."

With some hesitation, Rose closed her hand around the pebble and smiled at the girl. She stood and dropped it into her pocket, then moved towards him.  
>"I feel like we're wandering about Dickensian London. Are you going to order a boy to fetch a Christmas goose?"<br>"Oi! Did you just call me Scrooge? But you're right."  
>"<em>No<em>! Don't tell me you met Charles Dickens?"

"No, no, no! Well. Yes. Good ole' Chucky." The Doctor grinned fiercely and zoned out for a moment, lost in the stray eddy of a memory. Then he snapped back, "But that's not what I mean. It _is_ rather Dickensian, and it shouldn't be. Tamble is a proper idyllic little town, or at least it was last I checked." The Doctor reached into his jacket for a long device with a light up bit on the end. He flicked it out and waved it around in a most curious manner. "Oh! Oh. That's...well. I don't know what that is. It's bzzZzzzZzing. It never does that!"

"What are you on about? It makes that sound all the time." Rose stood, hands on hips. The children by her side giggled.

"No, no. That's more like bzzzzz. This is more like bzZzzzzZzz."  
>"You're mental."<p>

"Probably. Come on then!"

So the Doctor and Rose made their way across the town of Tamble with curious folks in their wake. The Doctor was following some kind of trail picked up from his device – a trail that took them all the way through the town – and even right through Mrs Marclos' kitchen. You can imagine the fright that gave her, and the slap she gave the Doctor. "It is the Festival of Giving," he quipped. "What shall I give you in return?" But Rose took him by the arm and dragged him out.

Eventually, the pair made their way to a clearing in which the round house of the Taclos family was nestled. There was no sweet smoke drifting from its chimney, and its bright paint had long since faded. There was a strange crackling energy in the air. When they rounded the edge of a bulging cliff, they saw why.

"What are you? What are _you_?" said the Doctor.

When Rose came round the corner, she gasped.

A large, glowing blue orb extended up from the ground and covered a device that looked like a large sled of some sort. As they got closer, both tasted the sharp tang of iron with every deep breath. It was difficult to see past the barrier, but there was movement. Someone moved very quickly – almost too fast for the eye to see.

"Oh, oh!" exclaimed the Doctor. He pulled hands through his hair and trotted around the circumference of the orb, his device in hand. "A temporal shield! That's fantastic!"

"Doctor!" called Rose. "What is that?"

"Didn't you hear what I just said? I just said it! A temporal shield!" The Doctor motioned to the blue ball in front of him.

As the Doctor was gesticulating and trying to explain the flow of time to a bewildered Rose, the figure in the ball began to slow down. Bit by bit, he became synched up with the world around him. And it _was_ a he. A man of middling height with no beard and sandy hair. The two spines on his chin were shorter than average. His dark eyes looked tired and worn. "Excuse me!" he huffed. "Who are you? Whatever you are, your temporal matrix is pushing my device out of synch."

"Sorry. But your glowing ball in the middle of a field sort of invites investigation. Don't you have the townspeople wandering up, wondering what you get up to?" said Rose.

San huffed again and slapped a wrench against his hand. "They think this valley is cursed," he said. "Ever since my family field went barren and the well dried up, and the sickness took my parents. What do you want?"

The tall man in the leather jacket stepped up to San. "Who are you? Whoever you are, you, you're very clever. Almost too clever for Tamble." He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and waved it about. It might well have been for effect, for if it was taking readings, he wasn't referring to them. "Well. You're Aisliean, or at least you're giving the impression of one. But this is an agrarian society. And messing with the laws of time and space isn't very farmy at all."

"My name is San Taclos. I'm trying to save my village. There's a rather longer and more complicated explanation for it. But that...that's the short of it."

"What are you building? What _have_ you built?" The Doctor asked. "Or rather, I know that bit. I want to know how you power it. Sustaining a temporal acceleration field takes talent. That, well, obviously you have that. But it also takes resources. And your hut hasn't even got a fresh coat of paint."

San opened his mouth to answer the good bloody questions, when a scream echoed from the village.

Hoofbeats thundered from over the rise. The hooves beat a solid patapatpat – a cacophonous rhythm.

"Slepnirs!" cried San.

And so they were - masked riders on six-footed black mounts. Each mount held two riders – one with a wicked weapon and another controlling the creature. They were the things that parents tell their children about to scare them into slumber. But how can scary things possibly lure a child to sleep? How silly.

"Doctor!" said Rose.

"Quick! This way. Into my machine," said San. He grabbed each of them by the shoulder and pushed them into the sleigh. "Once the field is activated, they won't be able to reach us." He dashed over to his console that was covered in a flurry of angry red lights. "The power levels are completely out of synch."

"Ahhh, well, we might have something to do with that. Here. I can sort it out." The Doctor pointed his device at the console. It whizzed and hissed and generally made a most unpleasant racket.

The lights on the console all lit bright green. San slammed his palm down on a golden button just as the Slepnirs pulled the trigger on their weapons. The shining orb crackled to life around them. The beams of their attacker's weapons ricocheted off the field. And then something very curious began to happen – all the action outside the field began to speed up.

Rose stared at the odd scene beyond the field. "It's like the time Mickey sat on the remote at mum's place and it fast-forwarded through the tape of Coronation Street and spoilt the ending. She pitched an absolute fit. Microwave never worked the same after."

"Remind me never to watch television with Jackie."  
>"I don't think you need reminding on that, ay?"<p>

The Doctor gave Rose his very best put-upon look.

"Who are you people and why are you on my planet?" San breathed as he stared at the two of them.

"Sorry, sorry. Very rude of us. Just a bit distracted what with the world outside this bubble speeding up and all. I'm The Doctor. This is Rose. We're time travellers." He lifted a hand and fluttered his fingers. "Hullo!"

Rose folded her arms over his chest. "Right. When I tell people we're time travellers, I get the business. You do it and it's hunky dory."

"Time...travellers? Excuse me?" said San.

"It uses the same principles your device works on. Temporal mechanics and all that. I'd give you a lecture but I'm the Doctor not the Professor. He's a nice bloke. A bit long-winded. Where was I? Oh yes! Can you slow time down as well?"  
>"Well...yes. But the only way we're getting out of this field alive is if we wait them out."<p>

"But what about your village? They didn't look like they were after just you," said Rose.

San slumped into the red velvet seat of his device. He buried his face in his hands and exhaled slowly. "It's all my fault. I salvaged a power cell from a crashed Slepnirian raider. Salvaged it and enhanced it, I should say. I increased the power output tenfold. I also adapted their technology. Their ships travel by creating tears in space and skipping between points."

"And they sensed your power signature when they came looking for their downed ship."

San nodded slowly and ran his tongue over the front of his lips. "They tax the village and leave only enough so that they can keep on. They strip the town of its resources, hoping I won't have enough to continue my work. I can make time move faster or slower within the field. I usually speed it up so I can create technology to fight the Slepnirs."

Outside the field, the menacing creatures moved at a blur. More arrived and encircled the orb with a force of a dozen soldiers.

"How...how much time has passed outside?" asked Rose as she stared as a dark helmeted figure stood stock still in front of her.

"About...three days," said San as he checked his instruments.

"And what makes you think they're going to go away?"

"The atmosphere of this planet is toxic to them. They'll have to return to their ship for decontamination. I'm important to them, but not _that_ important. They don't spare more than a dozen for this entire planet."

"But the people in the village, they weren't fighting. They were just living their lives. They were celebrating the uh..." Rose snapped and looked towards the Doctor. "Ooh. The Festival of Giving!"

The look on San's face was one of deep sadness. He turned his dark eyes away and flexed his hand slowly. "The Festival. Already? I uh, well, you see, I've had a bit of trouble convincing my people to fight. So the bulk of my efforts have been aimed towards extending my field. If the entire planet was to be temporally isolated, we'd be protected."

"If you did that, you'd be cutting your people off from the rest of the galaxy," said The Doctor.

"And what of it?" San bristled. "From what I've seen about the rest of the bleeding galaxy, we wouldn't be missing much."

The Doctor gave the other man a look, a long, wise, knowing look. For you see, he was a soldier not long ago. He was a man not unlike San Taclos – burdened with making choices that would affect the lives of all of his people. "Who are you to make that choice?"

The words slammed against San's chest like a sack of canto roots. He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke, it was in a hushed whisper. "It's the only one! What else can I do? They won't stop until they've rid this planet of all of their technology, and of me."

"You could leave," said Rose. She had been quiet throughout the exchange. The shiny pebble given to her by the little girl was turned over and over in her hand. "We have a way to take you away from here."

"Rose," began the Doctor.

"What? Do you like his plan? Cut off his entire planet in a temporal bubble? What kind of stupid solution is that?"

Usually, the Doctor's eyes bubbled with mirth or radiated quiet power. Something in Rose's words prodded a wound that was still fresh.

"If he really cares about his people, he'll stop making them a target. We have a way to take him away from here." Rose turned to San. "We have a ship. If we can get to it, we can leave this planet. Will the Slepnirs care about Aislie if you're not here?"

"There's no guarantee of that. He's a genius, Rose. If he abandons them, he's taking with him all the good he could ever do for them!"

"Abandoning them is the best possible thing he could do." Rose walked up to San and took his hand. She pressed the stone against his palm. "I'm giving you a gift. It's the Festival of Giving, so you have to give me one, yeah?"  
>San nodded and kept his eyes cast down. Something about the pebble caused a sharp twinge in his gut. He fought back a sudden tear.<p>

"Well, all I want is an answer. Tell me, if you leave this planet, will the Slepnirs continue to threaten your people?"

The short man was silent for a long moment. He rubbed his thumb over the stone's smooth surface. "They might," he began.

The Doctor lifted his chin.

San exhaled. "But...it's unlikely. There were star charts in the downed ship. This planet isn't anywhere strategic. They only want me because they don't want my people to have their technology. Doctor..." he began, "I think Rose is right. I'm the danger here."

The Doctor looked wholly unsatisfied with that answer. There was something cutting ready to dart off his tongue, but for whatever reason, he held it back.

Outside the field, the Slepnirs had still been pacing, circling, peering into the field for what had to be a long time. One by one, the walking nightmares retreated, until only the golden-helmed rider and his companion were left.

"Aragos," murmured San. "Their commander. He might be a problem. He hates this assignment. If I escape, he might raze Tamble just out of spite."

Aragos lingered a moment longer, staring directly at San with intimidating stillness. After what seemed like an inordinately long time (even when one is dealing with temporal bubbles) the dark rider retreated.

Once the shape was over the hillside, San reached for the controls. Slowly, the energy field around them crackled and dissipated. "We don't have long. It will take a few hours at best for them to decontaminate themselves."

"You don't have to go. We'll help you fight them," said the Doctor.

"Doctor..." said Rose.

"He doesn't have to run. I'm so very clever. He's no slouch. We could set up the field..." he snapped his fingers, "...like _that_."

A silence hung between the three of them for a moment. San stood, head bent, eyes lost in thought. After a long moment, he finally spoke. "I need some of the debris. I've shielded it from their sensors. It's what they want almost as much as me." And then, without waiting for the other two to follow, he stalked off across the field, back along the path they had taken from the village.

The Doctor began to follow, but Rose grabbed him by the arm.

"We're going to help him _fight_? When there's another solution? What's gotten into you?"

The Doctor paused and pursed his lips, then he looked down at Rose. His eyes softened even as his lips tightened. "He has to make his own choice. Or he'll never be able to live with himself."

Rose went silent as she fell into step beside the Doctor. They both let San stalk just ahead. The walk back towards the village only took a few minutes. There was evidence of the Slepnir's passage dug into the black snow. The great beasts had withered any greenery they touched. The exhaust from their strange suits was as poisonous to the Aelian landscape as the landscape was to them. The trail of destruction lead towards the deeper cluster of houses, then through the village proper.

The villagers were huddled inside their colourful huts. Mothers shielded their children. Young men and women brandished farming implements in what would be a feeble attempt at defending themselves if the visitors had been the Slepnirs.

"These people were lucky those creatures were in a hurry," murmured Rose as she zipped up her jacket a little higher.

As San passed through the village ahead of them, he was greeted by his people. They checked him over for injury, murmured their concern and commented on how he seemed to have aged a great deal since they had last seen him.

"Now now, please, please. Don't fuss. These visitors have agreed to help me get rid of the Slepnirs once and for all." San glanced over his shoulder towards Rose and the Doctor. His eyes revealed his troubled thoughts. He folded his hands over those of an older woman and leaned in to murmur something that made her eyes well up with tears. She patted him on the cheek and then withdrew.

"San. Where is the wreckage?" said the Doctor.

"Ah, oh, it's just up here. Come on then. Let go, Damia. There's a good girl."

The young girl with Rose's pink scarf looped around her neck clung tightly to San's leg.

Rose watched them with keen, insightful eyes and pursed her lips. "Who is she?"

"She's uh...she's my sister. Come on, then."

"No, San! No! You keep going away and you keep growing up." Damia buried her head against her brother's leg and clung to him.

Rose knelt down by the girl and smiled at her. "Your brother is doing very important work. You know that?"  
>Damia nodded.<p>

"Well, he wants to keep you safe. And I'm here, with my friend, the Doctor. We're going to help him keep you safe. All of you. Your whole village. But you have to be very brave, all right?" It was all Rose could do to keep smiling, to keep her tone bright.

Damia looked up at her brother and slowly disengaged. The elderly woman came up and took hold of her hand.

"That's a brave girl," murmured the Doctor.

San swallowed a sudden hard lump in his throat as he watched the woman lead his sister off. "Right, uh." he sniffed and wiped his eyes. "Right. The wreckage. Come on then."

The Doctor and Rose exchanged looks as they once again followed behind San. He led them to a barn near a cluster of houses. The lock was old and rusty, and took some fiddling with the key for the chains to release. He scraped the snow away from the door with the help of the others, then pulled it open. The air was stale and crisp and smelled of frozen mildew. He pulled back a gray cloth to reveal a ship that looked like an angry shard of ebony from the Damzi Mountains.

The Doctor's eyes lit up as he moved around the machine, feeling the surface of it, searching for portholes, markings, rivets...anything that would explain how it was put together. "Oh, this is fantastic. It's brilliant. Carved from a single shard of super-hard resin. Wired with liquid circuits. Not a bit of metal on it anywhere."  
>"My theory is that metal can't make it through the dimensional tear without disrupting it," said San.<p>

"Yes, yes! Yes of course. It wouldn't allow any alloy to pass through it. You'd have to use unadulterated materials or you wouldn't be able to control the exit aperture. Even if you could cross the event horizon with a ship made of metal, the energy output would be incompatible."

San watched the Doctor ramble on and easily parse things that had taken him months to get the basic principles of. "That's...that's the theory. It was difficult enough to make the power source work in the presence of the metal I used to construct my sled."

"Doctor..."

"Oh, but where's the damage? You're too much of a scientist to gut a working craft. You would have tried to get it flying first. You've taken out the power core for your device, salvaged the dimensional drive and adapted it to control the flow of time. No small feat, by the way. I've only met a dozen, maybe fifteen people in nine hundred years that could do anything close to that, and most of them were Time Lords."

"Doctor!" said Rose a second time.

"What! Right. Oh right. Imminent doom on horseback!" the Doctor clapped his hands together and looked at San with a fierce, but somehow warm look in his eyes. "Where to start?"

San let his shoulders droop as he looked over the wreckage. "I've been dampening the ship's energy signature. The moment I remove it, they'll detect this ship. They'll come whether they're done decontaminating or not."

"The offer is still there, you know. We'll help you fight," said the Doctor.

Rose looked between them both and then held up a hand. "Look. There's got to be a solution that's not turning yourself in, running away or trying to fight these things. You're both smartypants. Think of something!"  
>San looked at his pants, and looked perplexed. He looked towards the Doctor, who just shrugged.<p>

Then, like a lightning bolt, something struck both men at once.

"Oh! Of course. We'll need to cross-wire the..." said San.

"...and then overload the..." said the Doctor.

"...and we'll have to move it away from the village centre."

"Naturally."

"There will be a weight problem," said San.

"I think I can help with that. I have a sack that's bigger on the inside."

The two men continued on like that, finishing each other's sentences while somehow revealing very little of their plan to the only normal person in the room. Then they began bustling about, salvaging bits and pieces from the downed ship.

Despite her best efforts, Rose wasn't able to get the men to concisely explain to her just what the plan was. The Doctor's excuse was "there isn't time!" while San's was "you wouldn't understand." It was all Rose could do to keep up with them and follow their instructions if they gave her an armload of equipment, or asked her to fetch something from the village. She was playing the role of the Atta Fly in the tale of the Fly and the Rimbot.

Within the hour, they had assembled a strange looking pile of machinery in the clearing and attached it to San's device. The Doctor's sonic was whirring almost constantly as this bit and that bit were fastened together. Three large power sources had been shoved into a red sack. The batteries would have weighed their device down considerably, but the sack was magical, and was larger on the inside. The remains of the ship had been towed through the snow to the clearing. A light flashed on it that San explained was the dampening field.

"Ah ha! I think that's done it! Have a look," said the Doctor as he showed a nest of wires to San.

"Oh, that's brilliant, that is. I would never have thought to cross-connect the system like that. You're amazing."  
>"So I'm told," beamed the Doctor.<p>

"Oi. Less puffing up egos, more...whatever it is you're doing," said Rose. She squished black snow together to create a ball.

"We're done!" said the Doctor, arms wide. "We've set the trap. There's cheese in it," he motioned to San.

"What's cheese?"

"Now we've just got to spring it. Do we still have time?"

San puffed up his cheeks and checked his pocket watch. "Any minute now."

"Are you sure about this?" said the Doctor.

"Well. The alternative is that I leave the village unprotected and to the whims of Aragos. If we send them and their technology back where it came from, they should be satisfied."

The Doctor looked long and hard at San. Then he reached out to squeeze the other man's shoulder. "It's a good plan." With one hand behind his back, he pointed his sonic device at the control panel and gave his wrist a few flicks.  
>"Wait, so let me get this straight..." began Rose.<p>

"No time to go through it all!" the Doctor said as he reached over to switch off the dampening field. "Time to take cover now, Rose."

"Doctor!"

But the Doctor was right. - there was no time. The thundering hoofbeats of the Slepnirs could be heard from over the hill almost the moment the field was switched off. The dozen deadly riders screamed over the hematite hills, down towards the valley.

San stood there, between the trap and his time device, a switch in his hand.

"San! Get down!" called Rose.

The Doctor held her by the shoulders and dragged her behind a felled tree. "He knows what he's doing."

Aragos took the lead and stopped short right in front of San. The six-legged creature reared up and its front four hooves pawed at the air. It dropped down and snorted toxic exhaust. "San Taclos," gurgled the voice behind the helmet. "You have surrendered yourself at last."

San watched as the other riders encircled the ship debris and his sled. "You could say that," he glanced off towards the tree where the Doctor and Rose were huddled. "I'm going to send you back where you came from." He slammed his palm down on the device in his hand.

The Slepnirs' mounts startled and started to pace, but it was too late. The debris and San's device started to make a loud whirring sound. There were a series of small pops as energy extended outwards. Then the ground beneath their feet began to open up. One by one the Slepnirs fell through the crack, whinnying and thrashing as they fell.

Aragos made a roaring sound like thunder and surged towards San, his weapon in his hand.

San scrambled backwards, into the seat of his metal sled. He managed to strap himself in, seconds before the ground swallowed Aragos up. A slice of energy licked from the end of the Slepnir's weapon, and grazed the sack strapped to the sled. Then it tipped forward with San inside, and fell through the gaping hole in time and space.

There was an incredibly loud wave of sound that shattered from the point of San's sled. It rocked the small hut and knocked wooden tiles off, and sent a wave of black snow out in all directions, including up and over the Doctor and Rose.

When the snow settled, there was nothing left. No hut, no wreckage, no sled...and no San.

Rose stood, covered in sparkling hematite, her eyes damp with tears. The Doctor stood beside her and reached out to grip her hand.

Although the village of Tamble, on the planet of Aislie, in the system known as Polestar mourned San Taclos, he was not dead. He was in fact, somewhere very familiar to Rose, though some time in her past. It was a place where the snow was pure white, and where the people did not have tall braids in their hair or spines on their chin. The pieces attached to San's sled remained intact. With some effort, he even managed to repair the temporal shield. The red sack that was larger on the inside, came in very handy indeed.

San found the people to be kind at heart, but they needed to be reminded of their capacity for kindness, so he taught them about the Festival of Giving.

The Slepnirs never had any reason to visit Aislie again. And after paying their respects, the Doctor and Rose left the Polestar system. The man named San Taclos would never be forgotten - either by the people of Tamble, or the children of Earth.


End file.
